During a payment transaction using a payment card (e.g., a credit, debit, or stored value card), it is important to verify a cardholder's ownership of an account to avoid a variety of problems, such as unauthorized use. Payer authentication is the process of verifying a cardholder's ownership of an account. The most common method to authenticate a cardholder's ownership of an account occurs routinely at a point of sale during what is called a “card present” transaction. A card present transaction involves a merchant's representative taking the cardholder's card, swiping it though a payment card terminal to verify account status and credit line availability, and then checking to see that the signature on the back of the card matches the purchaser's signature. If the merchant follows specific guidelines for this type of transaction, the merchant will be guaranteed payment for the amount authorized less discount and fees. A service provider such as Visa International Service Association (or service organization) may provide these specific guidelines.
“Card not present” transactions, on the other hand, such as those occurring online, through the mail, or over the telephone, involve payments that are not guaranteed to the merchant. No guarantee is provided primarily because the payers are not authenticated in such non face-to-face transactions, thereby allowing many risks to accompany the “card not present” transactions. Such risks involve issues such as chargebacks of payment transactions to online merchants, fraud for both merchants and cardholders, increased exception item processing expenses for banks, and an increased perception that buying goods and services online is not safe and secure, which may keep some consumers from buying online. Specific examples of risks include the unauthorized use of stolen account information to purchase goods and services online, fabrication of card account numbers to make fraudulent online purchases, and extraction of clear text account information from network traffic.
Given the continued expected high growth of electronic commerce, it is important to provide methods to authenticate payers. This will benefit all payment system participants including cardholders, merchants, and financial institutions. Authenticating the payer during online purchase transactions will reduce the levels of fraud, disputes, retrievals and chargebacks, which subsequently will reduce the costs associated with each of these events. Authenticating the payer also addresses consumer security concerns and therefore will lead to increased online sales. Prior systems used to authenticate consumers during online transactions have not been widely adopted because these systems were difficult to use, had complex designs, required significant up-front investment by system participants and lacked interoperability. Certain prior systems additionally required the creation, distribution and use of certificates by merchants, cardholders, issuers and acquirers. Such use of certificates is known to be quite burdensome.
In view of the foregoing, a system for authenticating the identity of the payer in an online transaction would be desirable. Such an authenticating system should be relatively easy to implement and use, require a minimal investment of resources, and provide a high level of interoperability between the system's participants.